Against the Stream

"Make Like Jesus": Christus Victor in "The Leftovers"

The Leftovers is woefully underwatched. On the one hand, that's not too surprising, given the fact that it's a relentlessly depressing show that began its first episode this season with an extended vignette that had nothing directly to do with its plot, featuring a prehistoric woman who watches as her family as crushed by a cave-in, gives birth to a baby on her own, and then dies of a snakebite while protecting her newborn child.

In what comes, there will be spoilers. Be warned!

If you are not familiar with The Leftovers, here is a recap of its basic premise: The whole show takes place in the aftermath of an "rapture-like" event, in which a substantial proportion of the world's population suddenly disappeared. In the context of the show, it's make clear that this isn't the "Rapture" per se, but an event with some similarities to the idea. All sorts of people have disappeared, and nobody is able to come up with a good reason as to why.

The first season of the series tracked Tom Perrotta's novel pretty closely. It included such things as a man named Holy Wayne who claimed to be able to overcome peoples' grief through the power of his hugs, an Episcopal priest who spent his days trying to prove that the "departed" (those who disappeared) where actually morally horrible people in order to show that whatever had happened it wasn't the Rapture, and a white-clad cult of mute smokers called "The Guilty Remnant" who believed that the world ended the day everyone disappeared, and who recruited their members by silently stalking them and conspicuously smoking in their presence. It was -- undeniably and inescapably -- weird and depressing. Yet it was also engrossing, offering a picture of a world very much like ours, but attempting to recover from an undeniable trauma.

The second season has necessarily departed from its source material. The main action has taken place in the town of Jardin, Texas, where nobody disappeared on the fateful day, and which viewed itself as blessed because of that. Kevin Garvey, the protagonist (as much as there is one) from the first season, has moved there with his girlfriend Nora, his daughter, and the daughter of Holy Wayne, who came to them through a convoluted set of circumstances involving Kevin's step-s0n. There they meet the Murphy family, their new next door neighbors, who have twin children who were actually born months apart. Meanwhile, Kevin's ex-wife, a former Guilty Remnant member, and his half-brother, have dedicated themselves to destroying the cult. Nora's brother Matt has also relocated to Jardin, with his comatose wife, who he insists woke from her coma on their first night in the town, and is now pregnant.

If this sounds like an enormous amount of plot, rest assured, it is. Yet the show has so skillfully developed these characters and their situations, that it makes for compelling television.

During season 1, Kevin witnessed the suicide of the leader of the Guilty Remnant, Patty, after he had kidnapped her and then attempted to let her go. In season 2, he has been haunted by what, to all appearances has been her verbose and incredibly obnoxious ghost. Over the course of the season, he becomes increasingly distracted and distraught, and after confessing his situation to Nora, she leaves him. Desperate to fix his life, he pursues a radical solution, going to Virgil, who is related to the Murphy's, and taking a poison that Virgil insists will allow him to cross over and confront Patty in the nether realm, and defeat her there.

There is an enormous amount of symbolism embedded in these actions, not least of which is that Virgil, who becomes Kevin's guide in his journey to the nether realm, has the same name as Dante's guide to the afterlife in The Divine Comedy.

What I found most striking about the Christ-imagery in "International Assassin" though was the way in which it was a departure to the usual "sacrificial atonement" motif in most of popular culture. In fact, The Leftovers itself has played with that idea -- that someone takes a punishment intended for someone else -- just this season, when Nora's brother Matt leaves the purportedly "safe" enclave of Jardin to live among the denizens of a camp outside of town, constituted mostly by strange and unseemly characters trying to gain entrance to Jardin. At one point, Matt comes across a naked man imprisoned in a stocks. "Do you want to free him?" asks a woman nearby. "Yes," answers Matt. "Then take his place," she responds. He walks away, but later returns and does exactly that, and in the process, gains the trust of the camp-dwellers, as he puts it, by "refusing to let anyone take my place." Matt the minister has found  new flock to pastor through his sacrificial act.

 

This, however, is not the Christ-imagery of "International Assassin." Far from taking a punishment on someone else's behalf, Kevin's road to resurrection involves him confronting the ghost of Patty and defeating her. In the context of the strange dream-logic of the nether world, this means that he has to kill her. This proves far more difficult than he had realized however, as Patty has disguised herself as a little girl, and Kevin has to throw her down a well to finally rid himself of her. Even then, he eventually has to descend into the well along with her, and drown her with his bare hands. Only then does he find himself resurrected, as he emerges from the ground (after, I assume, three days), and in some mysterious way "changed."

It's unsavory to associate this story with the Christ narrative, but actually it echoes one of the oldest explanations of how Christ's sacrificial death is salvlific, the so-called Christus Victor model. This model of the atonement was popularized in the 20th century by Gustav Aulen, whose book of that name give modern form to the idea, but it goes back to the earliest of the Church Fathers.

Here, for example, is how Origen expresses it at one point:

"He [Christ] disarmed the principalities and powers 
and made a public example of them, 
triumping over them in it [the cross]."

It's expressed differently depending on who you read, and the precise nature of triumph differs from writer to writer, as is the question of who is defeated, but the basic idea remains the same: Christ atones for human sin by a victory over death. What we see in "International Assassin" is a literalizing of the conflict, by pitting Kevin as the Christ-figure against Patty the Satan-figure, and his killing of her as the victory through which he triumphs over death itself.

What's striking about this presentation is the way in which the show is willing to depart from the usual, and quite overused, conception of sacrificial atonement in order to embrace a different, and arguably controversial, atonement theory -- that death is an enemy that is to be defeated, and that salvation comes through a confrontation with evil through which death is overcome. Fond as I am (at times) of the sacrificial atonement model (though I would reframe it more in the vein of solidarity and incarnation), the use of this alternative offers a different shade of meaning to the nature of atonement, and reveals that The Leftovers has got a lot more going on theologically than it might otherwise appear. From the beginning, the show has necessarily embraced an exploration of religious themes, and it is particularly remarkable for portraying a conflicted yet sympathetic minister in the character of Matt. The Leftovers is not an easy show, but it is rewarding, and well worth the time spent exploring its themes.

Where Your Treasure Is

Joyce Meyer, televangelist and prosperity gospel doyen, can't understand why anyone would criticize her for having a net worth of approximately $25 Million:

Meyer sees no problem with her compensation, saying, “We do not agree that the ministry is in violation of any law. If the IRS were to investigate, we would fully cooperate.”

She has also shared that “there’s no need for us to apologize for being blessed. You can be a businessman here in St. Louis, and people think the more you have, the more wonderful it is … but if you’re a preacher, then all of a sudden it becomes a problem.”

I am somehow reminded of a statement by Jesus. Something to the effect of a rich man and the eye of a needle. Of course, Meyer, being of the ilk that believe that money=God's blessing, would probably be among those who argue, falsely, that "The Needle" was a gate in Jerusalem that a camel could only pass through on it's knees -- that is to say, humbly. Of course, everyone I've ever heard offer this sorry excuse also insists that of course, despite their own enormous and extravagant wealth, they are perfectly capable of embodying the proper spirit of humility Jesus was speaking of. Funny how that works.

Of course, there was no such gate in Jerusalem, and the meaning of the saying is really pretty clear: Extravagant wealth is an obstacle to following God. Yet, as soon as they start acquiring it, Christians seem to go to great lengths to argue that, one way or another, Jesus didn't really mean it. And of course, that's the bread and butter of the Prosperity Gospel.

Yeah, Joyce Meyer -- I am not a fan.

Game of Thrones and the Spiral of Violence

So, let's talk about what happened on Game of Thrones last night. Let's explore our feelings, shall we? open up, and tell the group all about our reactions to the Purple Wedding. I'll go first (warning: Spoilers ho!)

So, I have to admit, I knew it was coming. I've read the books. Twice. In fact, I've been looking forward to watching Joffrey Baratheon/Lannister choke to death at his own wedding pretty much since the whole "Lion's Tooth" incident in season one). And this leads me to the troubling reality: I enjoyed watching Joffrey die.

I have enjoyed very little of the death on this show. I didn't enjoy them in the books either, but the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that these deaths are horrible, painful, shameful and immoral, and that, what's more, this is the reality of war. This is what war is. War is the organized pursuit of horror, death, and destruction. It's not romantic. It is not glorious. It is not what the Knights of Summer believe it to be. It is, in the end, the death of honor, not a manifestation of it. And Martin and the producers of Game of Thrones have done a painfully effective job at conveying that message. Repeatedly.

They have also demonstrated the idea that politics is, far too often, war carried on by other means, and thus only barely sublimates the brutality of war within the putatively peaceful conventions of diplomacy and political jargon. The threat of violence always lurks not particularly far from the surface of political life, and the main dispute is over the question of who gets to claim the right to weild violence under the veil of legitimacy. But again, as Martin has repeatedly demonstrated, ultimately all of the legitimation stories told by kings and princes rest on the fiction that their effectiveness at deploying violence in the interest of seizing power conveys the right to weild and control it. The Targaryans became the rulers of Westeros because of their military superiority (in the form of their dragons). Robert's rebellion established him as the King, not because he had proven some principle of legitimacy, but because he effectively murdered all who had a greater claim to the throne than himself. And after his death, all the War of the Five Kings demonstrated is that "king" is just the name we given to the last thug standing.

So, the question lingers: Can we overcome this cycle of violence, or is society ultimately condemned to base itself on the ability of one party or another to establish itself through the tools of violence, and then deprive others of those same tools? Is there a way in which authority and legitimacy can be established through nonviolence, or must violence and the threat of violence always be the ultimate trump card in any political dispute.

There are, of course, other models. One can look to India, or South Africa, or the civil rights struggle in the United States. It should be the case that legitimacy is rooted in an authentically moral standpoint which is able to pursuade the bulk of the population to either agree or at least acquiesce. Unfortunately, even in circumstances where legitimacy can be established on that basis, it often still must defend itself from illegitimate violence through resort to violence itself.

But, I also cannot escape the violence within me. It's not just governments, societies, and institutions that find a too-easy resort to violence. As individuals, violence is often our first order respons to conflict. And even when we do not actually act on our instinct to violence, it lies just beneath the surface. And so, when someone as legitimately hateful as Joffrey finally gets his comeuppance, I cheer with joy along with the entire rest of the viewing audience.

And it is for this reason that Kierkegaard once stated that original sin was the one empirically verifiable doctrine of the Christian faith.

On the Occasion of Fred Phelps' Death

Notorious bigot and protester of funerals Fred Phelps died yesterday and ... well, I don't really have anything to say about it. Phelps apparently died as a pathetic husk, hatefully rejected by the very community that he taught to hate. And lied about to the end by the community he taught to lie. There is really no commentary that can add to the sadness and irony of that fact. Best to let him slip into obscurity.

In that vein then, I'm going to follow Slacktivist's lead and use the occasion to remember another, better Fred. A Fred who was also a minister, but who understood that Christian ministry was about showing for the love of Christ in a broken world rather than preaching hate. A Fred who, during a childhood when I believed I was nothing but a freak, told me that he liked me just the way I was.

And as Slacktivist (who is also another Fred) reminds us, he also said this:

For me, as for all children, the world could have come to seem a scary place to live. But I felt secure with my parents, and they let me know that we were safely together whenever I showed concern about accounts of alarming events in the world.

There was something else my mother did that I’ve always remembered: “Always look for the helpers,” she’d tell me. “There’s always someone who is trying to help.” I did, and I came to see that the world is full of doctors and nurses, police and firemen, volunteers, neighbors and friends who are ready to jump in to help when things go wrong.

… To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.

I am fortunate to know many helpers. Too many to name. But I hope you all know who you are and know I value you.

So, here's to Fred Rogers, and here's to the helpers. May their tribe increase!

 

On True Detective Order Beats Chaos, Just Barely

Well, I am completely unsurprised that my prediction about the outcome of this first season of True Detective was completley wrong. What we got, instead of a grand conspiracy and cosmic moral horror, was ultimately a relatively conventional serial killer drama, with a philosophical and moral cherry on top.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

I have to say that I am fairly satisfied with the conclusion of the season. While it would have been interesting to see the detectives uncover some massive conspiracy that affected the entire religio-political Tuttle dynasty, I think that once they established Errol as a convincing villain (which really took all of five minutes at the beginning of the episode, thanks to tremendously creepy acting on the part of Glenn Fleshler), I was content to let the story spin in the direction Nic Pizzolatto wanted to take it. What the ending lacked in socio-political scope it more than made up for it in terms of setting and characterization. It left a lot of questions unanswered, but it answered the one that it set out to in the first episode: Who Killed Dora Lange?

But what I found more interesting than that was what it chose to do with its two protagonists. Having thrown them together as a mismatched investigative team, established that they never liked one another, and then given them plenty of reasons to actively hate one another, it then threw them back together again in the last two episodes, and by the end, transformed them into genuine friends, albeit in a very fragile friendship.

But Marty and Rust always also represented two opposing worldviews. Marty represented faith in order, law, family, and tradition, while Rust stood for chaos, anarchy, and dissolution. I had assumed from the start that, when push came to shove, the show would ultimately side with Rust's nihilistic viewpoint, particularly having exposed Marty's hypocrisy repeatedly. I never expected any genuine supernatural form of cosmic horror. I didn't really expect Cthulhu to rise from the depths and devour them, or the King in Yellow to descend from Carcosa in the form of the Living God. But I did assume that, at the end of the story, all of Rust's philosophizing would pay off in an image of a world in which all morality, all love, and all order are but convenient illusions, easily stripped away, and impossible to replace.

But the show went in exactly the opposite direction. It stuck to a rather conventional conclusion in which the bad guy is put down, order is restored, and hope rises from the ashes of despair. Despite everything the show had foreshadowed, Rust ends up alive at the end. What's more, he begins to climb out of the dark pit into which he had fallen after his daughter's death, and begins to see that there is light in the world. Not much perhaps, but enough to be worth fighting for. There was even some hint, faint though it was, that Rust begins to see some hope of reunion with all of those whom he has lost on the other side of death. I wouldn't want to read too much into that, but it certainly seems to be there.

At the same time, the show also restored to Marty everything that he had lost. His heroism and his brush with death opens a door to a renewed relationship with the family he had neglected and alienated. While all is not restored to the status quo ante, nevertheless, the final scene in the hospital with his wife and daughters suggests that there may indeed be hope for renewal there as well. Unlikely though it may be that Marty will reunite with his wife, who clearly long ago moved on, there is still the possibility that he will be able to have a real relationship with his children, and a genuinely caring relationship with his ex-wife.

Again, all of this is signaled in brief scenes, and one conversation between the two men at the end. I woudln't want to make a mountain out of that particular molehill. But it seems quite clear that, in the battle between order and chaos, Pizzolatto and company put their markers down, if only at the very last moment, in favor of order, and the possibility, though faint, of the restorative power of love.

Breaking Through Autism with Disney

 

In the New York Times Magazine Ron Suskind tells the story of how he learned to communicate with his son with the aid of Disney movies:

When Owen was 3, his comprehension of spoken words collapsed. That’s clear from every test. But now it seems that as he watched each Disney movie again and again, he was collecting and logging sounds and rhythms, multitrack. Speech, of course, has its own subtle musicality; most of us, focusing on the words and their meanings, don’t hear it. But that’s all he heard for years, words as intonation and cadence, their meanings inscrutable. It was like someone memorizing an Akira Kurosawa movie without knowing Japanese. Then it seems he was slowly learning Japanese — or, rather, spoken English — by using the exaggerated facial expressions of the animated characters, the situations they were in, the way they interacted to help define all those mysterious sounds. That’s what we start to assume; after all, that’s the way babies learn to speak. But this is slightly different because of the way he committed these vast swaths of source material, dozens of Disney movies, to memory. These are stored sounds wecan now help him contextualize, with jumping, twirling, sweating, joyous expression...

Taking on the personality of Iago, the parrot from Alladin, he was able to talk to Owen about how he felt:

Owen’s sitting on his bed, flipping through a Disney book; he can’t read, of course, but he likes to look at the pictures. The mission is to reach around the banister into his closet and grab his puppet of Iago, the parrot from “Aladdin” and one of his favorite characters. He has been doing lots of Iago echolalia, easy to identify because the character is voiced by Gilbert Gottfried, who talks like a busted Cuisinart. Once Iago’s in hand, I gently pull the bedspread from the foot of Owen’s bed onto the floor. He doesn’t look up. It takes four minutes for Iago and me to make it safely under the bedspread.

Now crawl, snail-slow, along the side of the bed to its midpoint. Fine.

I freeze here for a minute, trying to figure out my opening line; four or five sentences dance about, auditioning.

Then, a thought: Be Iago. What would Iago say? I push the puppet up from the covers. “So, Owen, how ya doin’?” I say, doing my best Gilbert Gottfried. “I mean, how does it feel to be you?!” I can see him turn toward Iago. It’s as if he is bumping into an old friend. “I’m not happy. I don’t have friends. I can’t understand what people say.” I have not heard this voice, natural and easy, with the traditional rhythm of common speech, since he was 2. I’m talking to my son for the first time in five years.

It is a very moving story, I encourage you to read the whole thing.

True Detective and the Occult

The first season of True Detective comes to an end on Sunday night and I thought I'd take the opportunity to put in my two cents about the show. For those not in the know, True Detective is an HBO show that plays around with tropes from pulp fiction and the "True Crime" literary genre. I didn't initially hop on board with the show, but a friend's recommendation, and some commentary on the science fiction site io9 convinced me to give it whirl.

True Detective tells the story of two detectives, Marty Hart and Rust Cohl, investigating what appears to be a ritual murder in Louisiana. Their investigation leads them to what may, or may not, be a satanic cult worshiping a being known as the Yellow King. It could also be connected to allegations of child abuse that was carried on by a Christian ministry in the '80s and '90s. The show has kept us guessing all along. I was particularly intrigued by the Yellow King imagery, since it connected what True Detective was up to with the weird fiction work of H. P. Lovecraft. I didn't imagine that the show would climax with Cthulhu rising from the depths of the Gulf of Mexico (though that would actually be pretty awesome), but I was interseted to see what the show would do with the source material.

It's been interesting to watch the theories fans have developed in order to determine just who the Yellow King might be. This theory is one of my favorites:

 

The show has also received a great deal of critical and social commentary. The latest is from Religion Dispatches pointing out how contentious the concept of "the occult" is in the field of religious studies, and also noting the way that the show fails to follow through on some of it's connections.

Don Jolly wrote, in a recent Revealer article on “The New York Occult Revival,” that in the world of religious studies the definition of occult is “hardly settled.” This unsettled nature can be clearly seen in the difference between the community Jolly describes—white, urban, and Protestant—and the one depicted in the fictional world of True Detective. African-American and creole religious traditions like voodoo and Santeria have, as Van Young notes, long been mined by cosmic-horror writers for both their supernaturalism, and their “cultural otherness,” which can lead to demonization of non-white or non-Christian faiths.

Where does True Detective rate on this score? The “occult” murderer’s signature is a small pyramid of lash-together twigs. In an early episode, detectives Cohle and Hart take the “stick thing” to be examined by an African-American pastor at a local church, who recognizes it immediately; as kids, he says, they always called them “devil-catchers.” But this recognition doesn’t lead the detectives to start racially profiling their possible killers.

Probably it’s not fair to judge director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s level of cultural sensitivity by his casting choices, but I couldn’t help noticing that the pastor was played by Clarke Peters, best known for his role as Big Chief Albert Lambreaux on Treme (perhaps the most respected avatar of Louisiana’s African-American cultural heritage ever depicted on TV). If that choice is any indication, the lines between “occult,” “Christian,” “African-American,” “Cajun,” “voodoo,” “Santeria,” may be as complex in True Detective’s plot as they are in real life.

It's difficult to parse all of the various cultural connections that go into popular religious sensibilities, and it's good to be reminded of the complexity of those concepts and connections from time to time.

But as long as I'm on the subject, I'd like to present my, almost certainly incorrect, theory on how things are going to end on Sunday night's episode. Bear in mind, the ending needs to be something that will tie together the many threads that we've encounterd so far, and give a satisfactory narrative shape to the whole. With that in mind, I think there is really only one possible conclusion:

Everybody. Every. Single. Solitary person that we've encountered on the show up till this point has to be involved in the plot. The only exceptions are Marty and Rust, and the two black detectives investgating the new murder. Beyond them, my theory is that everyone the detectives have come across up to this point, including Marty's wife, including both of his girlfriends, including Rust's briefly encountered girlfriend, the politicans, police officers, etc. Everybody is involved in this conspiracy. In the end, Marty and Rust will come upon some hideous ritual being performed for the Yellow King (probably the sacrifice of one of Marty's daughters), and they will realize that they are battling against forces that it is impossibel for them to overcome, and so the whole show will end in a note of ultimate cosmic despair in the face of evil.

I call this the Rosemary's Baby theory.

It has to be this. Nothing else will have the scope necessary to make it dramatically satisfying.

Except Cthulhu. Cthulhu would also work.

Does the World Need a Church-Based Reality Show (Answer: No)

So, apparently there's a new show starting on National Geographic that's sort of the church version of Supernanny, I guess? Here's a description from Religion News Service:

The trio travel across the United States to assist failing churches, using “the wisdom of Scripture and a little Southern ingenuity” along with some red-faced shouting at obstinate pastors.

So far, six episodes are planned, although the Church Hoppers said they hope to film additional shows. Their targets include a Full Gospel church, a biker church, a cowboy church and even a synagogue.

In the first episode, “Country Salvation,” the Church Hoppers visit a four-hour-long service at a “Bapticostal” church in North Carolina that meets in a sweltering sanctuary with no air conditioning.

They have seven days to fix the decrepit building and to persuade Pastor Larry Roseboro to work with the church he has instead of dreaming of a new sanctuary.

That sounds .... awful. Just awful. And unnecessary. But apparently there's no segement of the U.S. population that is not now subject to the humiliating public narcissism of reality television.

Once upon a time, when there was  thing called "Television Drama" that existed on channels other than AMC, I used to wish for a genuinely good TV series featuring a clergy person. A few anemic attempts were made over the years, and about the closest that anyone ever came was 7th Heavn, a show that I never watched because, in part, it was on the CW, and in part because it looked terrible.

Maybe one of these days there will be a TV show about churches and ministers that will be worth watching, but it sure as heck will not be a reality show about "church rescue consultants."

 

Religion and Doctor Who

At Exploring Our Matrix, James McGrath speculates on the signifiance of religion in the Whoniverse, especially during Russel T. Davies' era. He frames his analysis around a line from the Series 1 episode "The End of the World":

Shuttles five and six now docking. Guests are reminded that Platform One forbids the use of weapons, teleportation and religion. Earth death is scheduled for 15:39, followed by drinks in the Manchester suite.

McGrath argues that this need not be read as a complete prohibition on religion, but rather should be seen as contextual:

The jibe at religion need not be considered a statement that religion is dangerous and ought to be prohibited under all circumstances. Rather, it recognizes that the end of the world is precisely the moment in conjunction with which religion tends to become dangerous. And so ruling it out on this space station makes sense. But that doesn’t mean that it cannot have its place, even in the Whoniverse.

I think this is probably right. There's no reason to believe that the prohibition on Platform One extends to the entirety of the universe. But what I find interesting here is the way that it's framed: "Use" of these things is forbidden. But what does it mean to "use" religion in this context: Presumably it means to treat it as a tool, presumably for violent or nefarious purposes (as with weapons and teleportation). It is, as McGrath argues, "dangerous."

So the question becomes, what's dangerous about religion? If I had to speculate on the answer Davies would give, it would be that religion is dangerous because it divides us into warring, irrational tribes, which would be the sort of standard neo-atheist knock against religion (which, I'll note, doesn't mean that it's wrong, just incomplete). But of course, religion can be dangerous for lots of reasons besides that. For one thing, it can challenge the existing order of things, which every empire strives to preserve. It can actaully expand our circle of empathy beyond those to whom we're most closely related, actually becoming an enemy of tribalism as much, and perhaps more than, a defender of it.

My point here is that "religion" can't be boiled down to a particular thing, let alone be stuck with a label of purely "good" or "evil." Rather it is a multivalant reality which impacts the world in often unexpected and certainly unpredictable ways. And this is precisely what makes it "dangerous" -- there's no telling what it will do when it's allowed to roam free.

Of course, "forbidding" religion is only one way to constrain it's dangerous potential. Another way is to co-opt it, to make it an instrument of the predominating power structures of society. Still another way is to recognize it as dangerous, but to ensure that it's dangerous only in the right way at the right time and toward the right people. One could direct religions revolutionary potential toward those places where revolution is genuinely needed. And still another way is to open up the potential of religion to the creation of new communities in order to allow for a broader, discursive religious reality to emerge, one that prefers dialogue to destruction and openness to closure. 

There's no question RTD is not himself religious (this is widely known), and certainly uses Doctor Who to make some sharp satirical comments about religion. But at the same time, he's also cognizant of the symbolic power of religion, as illustrated in episodes such as "Last of the Time Lords," in which the Doctor is a clear Christ analogue (as I've argued before). Or in "The Impossible Planet/Satan Pit" in which a clearly demonic figure is defeated (exorcised?) by the Doctor.

But back to this particular example, I think the idea here is that in the future society, religion isn't seen as being "unnecessary" but as being an instrument for destruction. There may be time and places where such instruments can be properly used, but clearly Platform One at the end of the planet earth is not one of them.

One question that intrigues me is how Steven Moffat differs from Davies on this. After all, religion is clearly present and functional (if someone different from our own world) in his version of the show. We've got the Anglican Marines and the Headless Monks on the one hand, and on the other we've got the ritual in the "Rings of Akhatan" that is clearly religious in form. The main difference seems to be between religion which is designed to constrain some super-powerful but still finite threat (like the creature in the Satan Pit or the Grandfather in Rings of Akhatan) and religion as symbolic attempt to comprehend that which is in principle infinite (as in what H. Richard Niebuhr might call "radically monotheistic" faith).

Of course, in that last sense, the question is how religion is appropriated in the life of faith, and I think we some of the Doctor's companions, you clearly see the idea of self-giving and sacrificial love as being central to their identities. For my money, both Martha Jones and Clara Oswald most fully exemplify that aspect of faith, as both choose to undergo suffering, and potentially death, for the sake of offering the hope that the Doctor represents to those who need it (in the case of Clara, possibly even to the Doctor himself).

In all there is much to be said about Doctor Who and Religion, and James McGrath is among those trying to say it. There is apparently also a conference on Doctor Who and Religion going on at the University of Manchester this weekend as well. I wish I could have been there. I'm sure it's fascinating.

One More "Breaking Bad" Post

John Vest argues over at Adventures in Post-Christendom that rather than Satan, Walter White is best seen as a Christ figure:

The final scene brings it all together. The camera pulls out on a dying Walter White, lying on the ground in an almost cruciform pose, bleeding from a wound to his side, one palm of his hand bloodied like the stigmata. When the camera rises past the ceiling rafters, two of them make a cross over his body.

He goes on to explain how Walt's final actions can be seen as somehow salvific:

In the end, Walter White dies as a savior who manages to bring about some degree of redemption to the web of evil he has himself created.

Christ figures function in fiction in one of two ways: they either provide commentary on Jesus himself or they reflect an understanding of hero and savior from contemporary culture. Walter White is the latter. Though we have been horrified by his actions and mesmerized by his transformation from good to bad, at some level we were still rooting for him. We were skillfully reminded of this in the final episode as we marveled at his ingenious play of Elliott and Gretchen and took pleasure in his ultimate command of his situation and fate.

Whether it is catharsis or something else, it is not uncommon for us to admire and identify with the “bad guy” of the story. When Walt makes his confession—”I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was…really…I was alive.”—we were forced to admit that we liked it too.

I was skeptical of the articles that argued Walt was a Satan-figure. Needless to say I'm even more skeptical of the idea that he's a Christ-figure. In the end, as I've argued earlier, Walt's actions show him to be human, all-too human. And thus both the allure and the horror of watching what he does comes from recognizing that what separates us from him may simply be the matter of a few bad breaks and a few bad choices.